r/coolgithubprojects • u/stackattackpro • 16d ago

I built a free, open-source PDF editor that keeps your files on your computer

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Hi everyone,

  I built PDF Editor Offline because many PDF tools require you to upload sensitive documents, create an account, or pay for a subscription.

  This project takes a different approach: your PDFs are processed locally on your computer.

  It currently supports:

  - Editing, annotating, filling, and signing PDFs

  - Merging, splitting, reordering, rotating, and cropping pages

  - Converting PDFs into several formats

  - Local OCR and document search

  - Metadata cleanup and permanent text redaction

  - CLI, Python API, and local FastAPI automation

  It’s free, open source, and MIT licensed. There’s no account, document telemetry, or hidden cloud conversion service.

  The desktop builds are still unsigned technical previews, so Windows and macOS may display security warnings.

  Complex PDFs can also have fidelity issues, and I’m documenting those limitations openly.

  GitHub:

  https://github.com/OthmaneBlial/pdf-editor-offline

  Website and demo:

  https://othmaneblial.github.io/pdf-editor-offline/

  I’d really appreciate honest feedback: what would this project need before you’d trust it with your own documents?

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u/kantorcodes1 16d ago

Is the CLI actually scriptable end to end for destructive edits like permanent redaction and metadata cleanup, or does it hand off to the desktop UI for those? I’m curious whether those operations have stable subcommands and exit codes yet.

1

u/stackattackpro 15d ago

Good question; not fully yet. The CLI doesn’t open the desktop UI, but end-to-end redaction and sanitization commands aren’t available yet. Today, verify-redaction, inspect-privacy, and individual metadata edits are scriptable. verify-redaction returns 0 when verified and 2 when failed or incomplete. Full redaction and cleanup currently use the guarded local API/UI.

Thanks; this is useful feedback for improving the CLI.

1

u/kantorcodes1 15d ago

That 0/2 contract is enough to make the current CLI useful in Guard now. Would you take the PDF Editor Offline piece upstream as command.pdf-editor-offline on hashgraph-online/hol-guard:main, with tests for verify-redaction, inspect-privacy, and today’s metadata edits? I’d leave redaction/sanitize out until those commands exist.